“So?” He scanned his card to re-open the elevator door. “I needed to cool off,” he said, without a shred of remorse. “So did you. I did us both a favor.”

“Oh, please.” I followed him into the elevator. “Spare me your good intentions. Ditch me like that again and you’ll be hurting for weeks.”

Hank’s smug snort didn’t help the situation. He crossed his arms over his chest and lifted a dark blond eyebrow. “You can try.”

The elevator stopped at the fifth floor. “Thank God,” I said, stepping off. “The ego in here could suffocate an elephant.”

Our boss, and former chief of Station One, barreled out of the office we shared and marched down the hall like a formidable old bull in a black leather jacket. “Good, you’re here. I’m headed downstairs to—” He stopped midstride, dark eyes squinting and wide nostrils flaring as though he smelled trouble. “What did you two do this time?” Immediately his beefy hand went up. “No. Never mind. I don’t want to know. Downstairs,” he continued, striding past us and lifting up the file in his hand, “to meet with the brass. Washington pulled rank on the ITF, so we’re officially heading the investigation, and that crime scene is mine.”

No wonder Ashton was in fine form this morning.

The chief stopped at the elevator. “The guys downstairs have already briefed everyone—this stays under wraps as long as possible. Let’s just pray this doesn’t cause pigeons to start shitting rainbows over Atlanta. And Sian called in sick today, so I want you both doing the legwork, tracking down that love nest, the warehouse owner, and checking the database for matching MOs on the crime scene.” He stepped into the elevator. “Get to work!”

I slid my access key into the scanner. “Pigeons shitting rainbows? Where does he come up with that stuff?”

“Hell if I know. I stopped trying to figure out you humans and your sayings a long time ago.”

“Well, trust me, that’s no saying I ever heard.”

Our office on the fifth floor was, quite frankly, a huge mess. We’d taken up residence in a large suite used as a dumping ground for old or unneeded office furniture and equipment, using the discarded cubicle dividers and desks to carve out a serpentine path that led to a spacious corner near the windows and close to the small kitchenette.

The steaming coffee mug on Hank’s desk made the things I should’ve noticed earlier finally click: the unshaven jaw, the tousled hair, the same clothes he’d worn yesterday. “How long have you been here?”

He plopped in his chair and took a swig from the mug. “Long enough.”

“You slept here last night?” I went to the small kitchenette to pour my own mug of coffee, adding half-and-half from the fridge and grabbing a glazed doughnut from the open box on the counter. “What’s wrong with your place?” I happened to know Hank kept a very sweet, very expensive loft on Helios Alley.

“Nothing’s wrong with it. It’s who’s in it that’s the problem.”

I added sweetener to the coffee and stirred, coming back to my desk, gesturing. “Continue.”

“It’s nothing, Charlie.” He propped one elbow on the desk and scratched his stubble. “Just a little spat, that’s all.”

“With Zara?”

Zara was the concierge at The Bath House on Helios Alley. She was also a knock-out siren—weren’t they all?—who had as big a crush on Hank as he did on her. She was also part of the group that tried to get Emma back from Mynogan, so she was on my list of folks I’d go to bat for in a heartbeat.

Hank shrugged at my question and downed the rest of his coffee like it was the elixir of life.

“Well …?”

“Well nothing. That’s it.” He rolled his wide shoulders, faced his monitor, and then started tapping the keys, completely dismissing me. I glared at him, standing at the corner of our desks, which had been pushed back to back, until he finally stopped, lifted his reluctant sapphire eyes, and frowned. “Things have cooled off a little. No big deal.”

“See, that wasn’t so hard, was it?” I sat on the edge of the desk, cradling my warm mug and polishing off the doughnut, licking a few sticky fingers. “So what’s the problem? Maybe I can help. I’m good with relationships.” A bland expression came over my partner’s face, making me amend that statement. “Other than my own.”

He leaned back in the chair, swiveling to face me fully, looking about as enthused as a kid at a financial lecture. The dark shadow of his day-old beard gave him a haunted, rugged look that I found strangely appealing. His throat worked with his swallow and a faint blush crept from beneath the white collar of his shirt. “Just drop it, Charlie. We had an argument. I left, so she wouldn’t have to. End of story.”

I opened my mouth, so ready to argue the point, when he stopped me. “This”—he flung a hand toward the voice-mod on his neck—“doesn’t exactly help, okay? Now can we drop it?”

A frown screwed my face as I took a slow drink of my coffee. Surely Zara couldn’t be put off by the voice-mod being stuck on his neck. It wasn’t like it made him unattractive. Quite the opposite, in my opinion. The voice-mod made its wearer look like some throwback to Viking or Celtic times, when torcs hugged the thick necks of warriors and chieftains.

I slid into my chair and turned on my monitor, letting my curiosity go for now. “We need to talk to Ebelwyn, find out who owns the warehouse, and check out Daya’s work—might turn up something on her relationship … Pretty sure it wasn’t a jinn that killed her,” I said, my voice dropped to a mutter, “or any Charbydon for that matter.”

“What makes you say that?” Hank asked as I signed into the ITF database.

“Because I think it’s Llyran.” He scooted around the monitor in his chair, draping his arm across the corner of my desk. “You know, escaped serial killer. Lays low for a while. Adonai start disappearing and then found murdered.”

“I considered him, too. Stayed up last night reading his criminal file. The guy caused a lot of trouble in Elysia. Was officially banished from Elysia by the Adonai Council. Stole something big from the Hall of Records, wouldn’t reveal its location, was slated for execution, but killed his guards and fled. That was years ago.”

“What did he steal?”

“Officials never said. Then he gets here and starts killing. Indiscriminately. All races. Adonai, too. Every kill was unique. There’s no pattern that I can see. It almost seems like he was practicing, trying out different techniques and methods for murdering his victims, you know? The only reason he was caught before is because he didn’t try to be careful, or hide what he was doing. Didn’t care. Didn’t deny …” Hank sat back in his chair. “The guy’s a lunatic.”

Yeah. I could definitely attest to that.

“What’s the laugh for?”

“What?”

“You just gave a laugh.” Hank’s eyes narrowed. “A suspicious one.”

He wasn’t going to take this well, I knew, so I came right out with it. “Llyran broke into my house last night.”

Hank shot off the chair. “He what?”

“Mmm.” I took a sip from my mug. “Wrecked my bathroom, too. He didn’t hightail it back to Elysia after all. He’s been here the whole time. Said he killed our vics. He’s looking for something and seems to think I know where it is.”

“What is it?”

“I have no idea. I think he just wanted to show me how powerful he is, turn this into a game. Probably latched onto me when I saw him at Titus’s lab the first time.”

“Like he’s stalking you, you mean,” Hank said irritably, sitting back down.

“Could be. Who knows? The guy’s a Level Ten felon. Totally unpredictable. As you said, nearly impossible to profile. There’s no telling why he’s doing what he’s doing. He did mention a cause, though.”

“You think he’s our guy? That he’s not just taking credit?”

I chewed thoughtfully on the inside of my cheek, rolling around a pen on my desk. “Yeah, but I can’t shake the feeling that he isn’t alone in this. Whatever he’s doing seems grand. I don’t know. You had to be there.” I met my partner’s sober expression. “Something is different about him, about his power,” I began as evenly as I could even though my heart rate had kicked up. “He’s figured out a way to control the darkness.”